Proposals like this come and go, so judge the economics rather than the politics, and the economics here are shaky. A first-time-buyer tax credit sounds like help, but a demand-side subsidy mostly adds fuel to buyer demand and hands money to plenty of people who were going to buy anyway. Make buyers able to pay a little more without adding a single home to sell, and the predictable result is upward pressure on prices, which can partly cancel the benefit the credit was meant to deliver. The companion seller incentive misses on design. If the goal is coaxing affordable homes onto the market, tie the incentive to the type of home being sold, for example homes priced at or below the local median, so it actually targets starter inventory. Limiting it by the seller's income does no such steering; a middle-income seller can just as easily be selling an expensive home. The durable lesson underneath: housing affordability is a supply problem far more than a demand problem, and policies that stimulate demand without adding supply tend to raise prices instead of lowering the cost of getting in. We would rather see incentives aimed at building and freeing up entry-level homes.